Monday, September 27, 2010

The Little Man In There

A deeply curious thing has happened.

A little man has moved into my belly. One day he wasn’t there and then suddenly... there he was. I say Man in the sense that the person is human and part of Mankind, thus a man, but it could just as well be a little Lady. Anyway, for the moment he is a Man and he is creating some very interesting sensations.

It’s strange, having a Little Man inside of you.

Especially at first because you’ve been told he’s in there but you can’t really quite believe it. A Little Man, just hanging out there – what is he doing? Why did he choose you? And you feel sort of sick and your relationship with food and other things in your life become all warped, perhaps because the little Man has ideas and demands of his/her own. It’s as though, even being only a new tenant, he is already governing the house.

Being someone's house is pretty weird. I hope I’m a good, cosy one. I never imagined I would be, more a big cold one with the wind blowing through the open windows. Not a good nanna flat. I would like to be a good nanna flat with a roaring fire in there and lots of blankets and some soup on the stove.

I hope that the Little Man isn’t cold.

When they first took a picture and a little movie of the Little Man Inside, well, that was when things got really freaky. Because he was really There. The Love's eyes were very, very wide. The Little Man was moving around, playing with his toes, doing normal human things. He was Real. It was absolutely astonishing.

And the strangest thing was – though I didn’t even know this creature yet, I felt love. Have you ever had that before?

I couldn’t actually feel the little Man in there until the last few days when suddenly, though not like a tap or a knock, I could just feel that he was IN there. I’m sure he must be doing a whole lot of excavation work, putting up shelves, perhaps some posters, making it his own, but for the moment that still feels pretty abstract. But it’s nice to actually feel that it’s not just in my mind that he’s in there, he really, really is there.

I wonder what he’s like.

The Love and I talk about him a lot. We wonder if he’ll be a Man or a Lady and whether he’ll like us and the things we like and whether we’ll know what to do with him on the Outside, when we can touch him. I’m already scared of breaking him. For now, while he’s Inside he’s pretty safe, though it feels very odd that I can’t do anything to make sure he’s ok. Except try not to eat so much white bread and musk sticks and carambars for breakfast, which is really, really hard. I sometimes wish I could put a funnel down to him and just see if he’s going ok and if all’s cool and does he need any extra blankets. He looked pretty happy on the video.

I never really thought I’d see the day I’d become a home. Since I began to grow to the age when that would be normal and expected, I felt a sort of rising rebellion. It irritated me to be biologically programmed to desire such a thing. What was I? Why had I bothered trying to become a unique individual, when I was actually just like everyone else, just a basic animal needing to spawn, to lay eggs, to shoot out young. It bugged me, deeply. What was the point of all the travel, all the exploring, all the learning, when the most important thing was what everyone had already known forever – grrr – what was the point? I felt fooled by the world that allowed me to think I was bigger than my own biology. What an idiot I was. I was very very angry.

But now I’m inside the biology and I’m human and I must say, it feels excellent. It’s nice not to be a robot and stuck in your head all the time, it feels crazy – wild, uncontrolled, illogical. Natural. Animal. I could howl. I feel part of the kingdom. A lion, a fish, an ant. It's weird. It’s humbling. It's out of my control.

There is not that much sign on the outside yet that The Little Man is in there, though I got a very specific smile the other day from a grandma on a treadmill and I thought – wow – I think that was THAT smile. It was a knowing smile, a sort of nod, a welcome to the Club. Some other rather wonderful things have started to occur too, like my training bras have begun to heave and stretch and the deep, deep mystery wink of my belly button has gone flat down inside and is coming up to the surface. I never thought I’d ever see the end of my belly button. And now I can. And it itches. And I put special oil in it. And every day I get to Violet Beauregarde just that little bit more, which is cool – I mean, what an adventure, to balloon and become an entirely different shape. A giant blueberry. How utterly bewildering.